The Other Side
by Mystical Authoress
Summary: My 100th fanfic. Takes place with Young!Matsushiro and young!Meister (ages 27 and 24 respectively). Ken Matsushiro drags Sylvan Kirisaki along on a day off, in which there are events including public disturbance at a restaurant, winning tickets at the arcade, and beating up muggers with a stuffed monkey and their fists (and one foot, too). Sylvan is not too amused with this...


**Author note: I do not own Yakitate! Japan. Nor do I own Ken Matsushiro or Meister Kirisaki. Nor do I own covers of the song that inspired this fic a litte, 'The Other Side' by Jason Derulo (hence the title, because I really can't think of anything better...). The covers that inspired me were performed by Tyler Ward (solo), and Keke Palmer and Max Schneider (a duet-they collaborated), and I don't own any of those, obviously.**

**...This is my 100th fanfic being published. Oh my. (insert wide eyes here) I had a goal to publish 100 oneshots by July 13th this year, because that day was the day that I got a fanfiction account. Today is July 13th, 2013...exactly one year since I got a fanfiction account. 100 fanfics in one year...it's been a long road. I can definitely say I've probably improved a lot in writing, and I'm so glad that there are readers like you that enjoy reading my fics, so thank you so much for the support. I appreciate it a lot.**

**Warning: Possible spoilers for Yakitate! Japan, most of the fic takes place prior to the series (in this part of the fic, Matsushiro is 27 years old while Meister is 24 years old...), some violence**

**Constructive Criticism would be great, and I hope you read, review and enjoy! Thanks!**

* * *

**The Other Side**

* * *

"You need to get out more, Sylvan."

That remark came from Ken Matsushiro, who had just barged into Sylvan Kirisaki's room one night, after a long day of work.

"What do you mean, Matsushiro-san?" The younger man seemed to fidget slightly, embarrassed that one of his coworkers just decided to walk in on him while he was changing.

"Well," Matsushiro started, crossing his arms. "You've barely taken any of your days off. It's getting close to December, you know-if you don't use them, you lose them."

"I know..." Sylvan let out a sigh, shaking his head a bit. "It's just that, well-"

"No excuses." The older man cut in, making eye contact with him. Sylvan swallowed nervously at the look in Matsushiro's eyes-it was definitely serious. "I already arranged things so that you have a day off tomorrow. You really need to live a little-you can't work _all_ the time!"

"But-"

_"No. Buts." _

Matsushiro then proceeded to give Sylvan the death glare. The younger man's eyes widened in complete fear, before he responded quickly.

"Alright, alright! I'll take the day off tomorrow, don't kill me!" He even held up his hands in surrender, still terrified.

"Kill you? When would I ever do that?" Matsushiro asked.

The blond let out a scowl. "Remember the last time I went out with you on a day off? You and Ryuu Roumen beat up who-knows-how-many people with your fists while I was cowering in the corner and beating up anyone who came close with a baseball bat!" He exclaimed. "Of course I would be scared that you would kill me one day!"

Matsushiro remembered the bloody (literally in this case) memory, and he cringed slightly. "Oh. Um...right...Well, I won't bring Roumen with me, if that helps. At least we won't run into approximately seventy people that want to assassinate him, so I think we should be fine."

"So, it's just the two of us, then?" Sylvan asked.

"Yeah, just the both of us." Matsushiro grinned at him. "Care to join me?"

The blond thought for a moment. Not having Roumen around would mean a better chance of not getting involved in any fights. And sure, Matsushiro was crazy, but Sylvan was sure that things should be alright...

"Sure."

* * *

"So...what exactly are we going to do with the whole day to spare?"

After the two had breakfast at Pantasia, they went out into the streets of Tokyo, completely bored with not much idea of what to do.

"Hm..." The older man paused, before pointing at a nearby mall. "How about we just, well, go in there and see if there's anything interesting?"

Sylvan let out a sigh, before turning towards Matsushiro. "You didn't really plan out what we were going to do today, right?"

Matsushiro shrugged. "Not really." He admitted. "I was just thinking we would just talk, you know?"

"About what? Our siblings?" The younger man suggested.

"Well...Um...I guess so..." Matsushiro replied. "You first. How's your sister doing?"

"Sophie? She's doing fine, as far as I know from the last phone call." Sylvan replied quietly. "No boyfriend yet, according to her."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes."

"Are you absolutely sure?"

"Yes."

"Are you REALLY sure?"

"Yes!" The blond looked a bit frustrated by Matsushiro's persistence at the issue. "If she had a boyfriend, she would tell me! And if she didn't-oh, I don't know what I'd do...I would probably give her a good mini-lecture on how older siblings should know about this to give them advice about dating."

"You've never even dated anyone, Kirisaki-san. What makes you think you would be able to give advice about dating?" Matsushiro teased. "At least once Kaede gets a boyfriend I can give her advice."

"I know three things about dating, so at least I can tell the boyfriend that before he goes on any official dates with Sophie-just in case he's never dated anyone before her, of course!" Sylvan exclaimed. "You should never call a woman fat or ugly or both at the same time, never date your best friend's girl and never date your girl's best friend."

"Hm. No wonder that one girl got pissed off after I dated her friend for a few weeks, starting a week after I broke up with her..." Matsushiro trailed off.

"Goodness, Matsushiro-san, I honestly thought you would know this stuff-you need to be nice to them, you know! The bad guy image doesn't always work with attracting anyone." Kirisaki finished.

Ken let out a sigh. "Have you never heard the saying 'Nice guys finish _last?' _That's what made you make that one chick fall out of your fingers and into some muscle-brained jerk's arms last time I took you out!"

"I wasn't even interested in her! You _shoved_ me towards her, just after I was finished dancing at the club!"

"You need to get a social life!"

"I'm fine with the life I have, Matsushiro-san!"

After much talking and teasing, time had passed. Matsushiro's stomach growled.

Sylvan did his best to bite back a chuckle. "Someone's hungry, hm?"

"Well, yeah I guess." Matsushiro looked around, before noticing a nearby restaurant. "Maybe we could eat there!"

"Okay." Sylvan paused for a moment, before speaking up again. "Matsushiro-san?"

"Yeah, Kirisaki?"

"...Do you mind if we try to get a booth?"

* * *

"I'm glad we could get a booth..." Sylvan trailed off as the two each took a sip of their tea. "I don't know if I would be comfortable with a table near the window-no offense if you like that."

"Do you like your privacy or something?" Matsushiro asked, curiosity piqued. "As far I as I really knew about knew before today, you definitely didn't like to talk much with other people."

"Yeah. I've never been used to tons of people just walking around and maybe staring at me. I always worry that something like that will happen if I sit near the window." Sylvan replied quietly. The two were silent, before Matsushiro held up his cup of tea. "Hm?"

"Want to toast?"

"To what?"

"I don't know...to the fact that we have a day off?" The older man suggested. Sylvan smiled a little, before he lifted his cup of hot tea. The two paused, before they practically slammed the cups against each other with full force.

The cups shattered immediately, spilling the contents all over their hands. Both of them let out screams of pain, recoiling their hands to check them. Sylvan immediately tried to wipe his hand while Matsushiro was trying to blow cold air towards his hand to cool it down. By the time that the initial pain had ceased slightly, they both looked up to see angry waiters and shocked customers staring at them. Matsushiro had only one word to say.

"Crap."

* * *

"I can't believe we got kicked out..." Matsushiro muttered quietly as he ran a hand through his long, dark brown hair.

"Well, we did technically cause public disturbance-we could have gotten arrested for that, you know." Sylvan responded, crossing his arms as they continued to walk. "Wow, I didn't realize how cold it could get..."

"It's autumn. The weather shouldn't be that bad..." The older man responded. The two then took notice of neon signs flashing from one building nearby. "How about we check that place out?"

"But what about lunch?"

"Oh, right..." The two looked around, before seeing a ramen stand just beside the building. "We can grab some ramen and eat it before we go into the arcade, I guess. Sounds good?"

"Sure!"

The two bought some ramen as quickly as they could, ate it (obviously), and then they dashed into the arcade. They bought tokens, before they started to walk around the arcade.

"Which game first...?" Sylvan trailed off quietly. "I've never really been in an arcade before-it's all new to me."

"Really? Hm..." Matsushiro paused, before pointing at a nearby game. "How about Skee ball? You just toss the ball underhand up that ramp, and hope it goes into one of those circles. The closer the circle is to the middle, the more points you get. And more points mean more tickets, which we could probably exchange for prizes later on."

"Okay.." Sylvan walked over to the device, before placing two coins into the machine slot. Six skee balls rolled into a panel beside him, and he grabbed one. He paused, letting his arm drift back and forth to get the motion of tossing underhand become second nature, before he tossed it. The ball went flying up the ramp, and straight into the middle hole. "Oh! I got it!"

"Sweet! Just keep throwing the skee balls like that and you'll get tons of tickets!"

The next couple of throws got into the middle-all but the very last one, which had the younger man groaning in disappointment. However, the amount of tickets seemed to make up for the loss, which pleased both men. Matsushiro decided to try his hand at skee ball, until he realized how terrible he was at throwing things.

"Dang it!" Matsushiro glared at the skee ball machine. "Why won't those stupid skee balls let me get anywhere close to the middle!?" He muttered, frustrated with the failed effort.

"Um...Matsushiro-san...How about we go try some other arcade game?" Sylvan asked quickly, not wanting his friend to smash the machine out of not being a good thrower. He did not want to get kicked out of the arcade anytime soon-it was his first time, and he wanted it to be memorable in a good way.

"Oh. Well, I guess we shouldn't just use up all our tokens here, so..."

* * *

The two friends continued to play the arcade games, until they were finally out of tokens. Soon enough, they grabbed some prizes; a large, stuffed animal for Kaede and a small make-up kit for Sophie. "I don't know when I'm going to give this to her, though..." Sylvan had remarked quietly about the prize later on. "Maybe for Christmas?"

It was getting late, and the two figured they would walk all the way back to Pantasia, since they couldn't catch a taxi too easily. Unfortunately for Matsushiro, this meant he had to carry the large, stuffed monkey on his back, which was annoying for him.

"We can head through there." Matsushiro spoke up, glancing at a nearby, shadowy alley.

"Are you sure that's a good idea? I don't think-" Sylvan started, but Matsushiro gave him a look. "Fine...Let's hope it will help as some shortcut..."

The two began to tread their way through the alley, until they heard a voice.

"Give us your money or else we'll beat you up. _Now." _

Both men turned around slowly, to see three men in black, baggy clothing. Each of them wielded a knife, and the leader was a little taller than the other two men.

"You think that you can actually beat us?" Matsushiro spoke up, taking the stuffed monkey off his back and putting it in front of him as a shield. "Try us-there's no way we're going to let you take our money!" He shouted. He promptly threw the monkey at the three men, hitting the leader as the other two dodged.

"Matsushiro-san, look out!" Sylvan shouted as Matsushiro jerked himself out of the way of one of the men, as they attempted to punch him or stab him. Sylvan put down the makeup set, and rushed forward, before jumping up and kicking one man in the face. "My apologies, but you gave us no choice in the matter..." Sylvan murmured quietly to the unconscious man, before helping Matsushiro up and grabbing the makeup kit. "C'mon, run!"

"Wait! I need to get Kaede's present!" Matsushiro grabbed the stuffed monkey, which was a little ripped from a knife stabbing into it, before the two started to run. "Wait, why are we running!?"

"Because if we get caught beating up those guys _we'll_ be the ones being arrested! Call a taxi or something!" Sylvan shouted back.

"Taxi!" Matsushiro held up the stuffed monkey, and a taxi stopped right beside them. The two men almost literally threw themselves into the taxi before they both shouted at the driver.

"Pantasia Main Building!"

The taxi driver looked at them as if the two men were monsters from horror movies for a moment, before starting to drive. Both sighed of relief, glad to have lost the criminals' trails.

"That was too close." Sylvan spoke up after a moment of silence. "We could have gotten beaten up by those guys-or killed, considering they had knives with them."

Matsushiro frowned a bit as he inspected the stuffed monkey. "Dang it, it got torn...Kaede's going to be disappointed."

"I don't know, Matsushiro-san." The younger man remarked. "I'm sure she'll proud to hear that you used it to defend yourself from muggers. That doesn't happen every day, you know." He paused, before speaking up again. "But seriously, we need to be more careful! If we were found by the police while beating up those guys-"

"Sheesh, Kirisaki, don't worry so much. Your hair's going to go gray while you're young."

"You'll go bald first."

"Hey!"

* * *

Four years later, both the manager of Pantasia's South Tokyo Branch and the General Manager of Pantasia found themselves telling the story to Azuma, Kawachi, Tsukino and Kanmuri. Why?

It was completely out of curiosity. The four coworkers had wanted to know exactly the extent of Meister and Matsushiro's relations towards each other besides being coworkers, and rather as friends.

"Did you seriously beat up muggers with a stuffed monkey and your fists?" Kawachi asked in disbelief.

"Yeah, we did...as well as my foot, considering that I did kick one of them in the face." Meister responded, crossing his arms.

"We really should have made sure they were beaten to a pulp, Kirisaki. Then we would know for sure that they were taught in lesson in not trying to rob us." Matsushiro remarked, grinning as Meister stared at him, mortified.

"Matsushiro-san, they had knives, and it was possible that the police could have spotted us. Do you actually think-"

"You're still the worrywart you are, aren't you?" The afro manager cut in. "And besides, you still don't have much of a social life, you know!"

"Stop interfering with my life!"

"As if. I'm not going to stop until you get yourself a girlfriend already!"

"I never said I was interested in women!" Meister snapped at Matsushiro.

"Wait, does that mean you're-" Matsushiro started.

"Wha-no! I never said I was a homosexual!"

"But you said you weren't interested in-"

"I when I said that I never said I was even interested in women, it doesn't mean I'm a homosexual! I've never said that I was interested in men!"

"So you're bi, then!" Matsushiro tried to conclude, grinning from ear to ear.

Meister's eyes widened in mortified shock. "What!? What made you think up that!?"

Kawachi, Azuma, Tsukino and Kanmuri all exchanged glances with each other as the two men started to argue with each other, as they all thought the exact same thing.

_This is completely awkward..._

* * *

**Author note: I just want to thank you all for reading my fanfics, and I hope you enjoyed reading this one as well! Thank you!**


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